The WPA Music Program as Exemplified in the Career of Charles Faulkner Bryan

Abstract

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was a large-scale initiative President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced in the early 1930s to provide jobs and help the country recover from the Great Depression. The WPA offered music education programs that were innovative, sometimes daring, and often successful. They are unique in the nation's history. A historical overview of the WPA Federal Music Project (FMP) and its successor, the WPA Music Program, shows how the career of Charles Faulkner Bryan (19111955) exemplified the music program in one state, Tennessee, in the later years of the depression. Although they represented the first effort by the United States government to employ musicians and music teachers, references to the work of the FMP and the WPA Music Program are missing from some histories of music education. The New Grove